Morning Rush

Here is my weekday morning routine:

6:30: Hear Faith crying. Elbow Matt and tell him it's his turn to wake up and get Faith. He rolls over and falls back asleep. I go to sleep because she has stopped crying.

6:50 Hear Faith crying. Get out of bed. Grab bottle in refrigerator. Go to her crib [This is the best part of my day]She starts smiling and babbling. I feel like a rock star. At that moment I am the center of her orbit and she is so excited to be picked and held....

6:51 Give Faith her bottle

7:00 change diaper & dress Faith. take Faith into bedroom and sit her on top of Matt. he wakes up, smiles, and gets in the shower.

7:05 Put Faith in high chair. Poor some cheerios on tray while stepping and crushing cheerios and peas from last nights dinner with my flip flops.

7:10 Eat my own cereal, watch Katie Couric and wait for local weather forcast.

7:25 Read Faith a book while waiting for Matt to get out of the bathroom.

7:30 Place Faith in a corral, er I mean her play pen, and jump in shower.

7:45 Look through all my clothes that I hate and decide how far I can stretch the definition of "business casual".

7:50 make-up, attempt at hair

8:00 make sandwiches, find wallet, keys, pack Faith's stuff in stroller that she'll need for the day

8:15 leave house

8:35 arrive at babysitters, drop Faith off, try not to feel the guilt for working full time, and give her a big kiss goodbye

8:40 Hop on bike, ride to work

9:00 Arrive at work


Now you all know exactly, and I do mean exactly because this schedule hasn't changed in the last 6 months, what I do in the morning.

Black-Out

Dear Readership of three:

I am back from vacation in the Adirondaks, and boy was it sweet. While I missed the hubby dearly, it was nice to be away from politics, newspapers, tv, and the jobby-job for almost a whole week. The serenity of the mountains and the insular nature of vacations got me thinking about our "information age" in general. Once I got back and was deluged by all the media, I really thought about how fantastic and rejuvinating it was not to hear about the world around me.

This is contrarian to my usual habits: I love to read the paper on Sunday mornings after Faith goes down for her morning nap, I skim the internet daily at work and read the major papers, and I like to catch the local 10:00pm news. However, I am rethinking my formula for happiness. Maybe all the news creates a low-level stress in my life. I get bothered/depressed when I read about nasty, personal, political attacks against Presidental candidates, I am saddened/heart-broken when I hear about somebody abandoning their hours-old baby in a parking lot in suburban MD, and I feel sick to my stomach when I read about a 3 year old choking to death on popcorn in movie theater. (How are those parents coping? To take a child to the movies is a treat and to have it end so horrible wrong!)

So for the first time, I'm pondering a serious withdrawal from media outlets. I think I'll start on a trial run for a week to see if it's doable (especially the not surfing newspapers while at work part) and see if I feel saner and happier at the end of the week. My rules for the week:

1) no television (except the Olympics)
2) no reading online or print newspapers
3) Reading magazines like National Geographic are OK
4) Reading novels is encouraged

So question to readers: How does the onslaught of news affect your life? Or does it?

Signing Off, EH

Cockroach

I hate cockroaches. They are ugly, they are dirty, and for some reason they love our apartment. This weekend I bleached the floors, swept up every dust bunny, and cleaned until I was hot, sweaty, and enamored with my new clean digs. But still they subsist. Today I fed Faith in her high chair and one crawled up behind her head. Of course I smashed it and muttered a few cuss words, but I am secretly resigned to it. Our building management company has the, "If you don't like it move" attitude, which I'm seriously considering. They scurry, they jump, they scavange for Faith's dropped peas and drips of babyfood, and I almost always startle one if I turn on the light in our kitchen in the middle of the night. My apartment is clean, we are hygenic, and yet we have unwelcome cockroaches that grate on my nerves and climb up our walls.

AGGHHHH